Methods and apparatus to detect advertisements embedded in online media

ABSTRACT

Example methods and apparatus disclosed herein detect advertisements embedded in online media. An example apparatus includes memory, computer readable instructions, and processor circuitry to execute the computer readable instructions to render a graphical representation of progress associated with presentation of primary media distributed by an online media provider to a consumer device, the primary media including an event notification, the graphical representation to have a length and to depict the event notification at a location on the graphical representation. The example apparatus also includes processor circuitry to execute the computer readable instructions to determine a first time associated with the event notification based on the length of the graphical representation and the location of the event notification and determine a second time associated with a media feature of the primary media.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This patent arises from a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser.No. 17/222,707, now U.S. Pat. No. ______, filed on Apr. 5, 2021, whichis a continuation of U.S. Pat. No. 16/137,243, now U.S. Pat. No.10,970,739, filed on Sep. 20, 2018, which is a continuation of U.S.patent application Ser. No. 14/620,052, filed on Feb. 11, 2015. U.S.patent application Ser. No. 14/620,052, U.S. patent application Ser. No.16/137,243, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/222,707 are herebyincorporated herein by reference in their entireties.

FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE

This disclosure relates generally to advertisement detection andidentification, and, more particularly, to identifying advertisementsembedded in online media.

BACKGROUND

In recent years, online media delivery (e.g., streaming media delivery)has become a popular medium for the delivery of media to users. As usedherein, online media is media delivered from an online media provider tomedia presentation locations via a data network such as, for example,data delivered on the Internet using the Internet Protocol (IP).Services like Netflix™ and Amazon Instant Video™, as well as on-demandservices provided by IP based television services (e.g., AT&T Uverse™)are examples of providers of such online media. Online media ispresented to a consumer by a consumer device after the media istransmitted to the consumer device (or a device associated with theconsumer device) from an online media provider. The near instant natureof online media and the increase in bandwidth capabilities of Internetservice providers and consumer connections have contributed to theavailability and popularity of high resolution online media. Forexample, when a user of an online consumer device selects a movie froman online media provider, such as Netflix™, the movie is presentedalmost instantly without the user having to wait for the entire moviefile to be downloaded to the user's device (e.g., using streamingtechniques). Some online media providers have monetized the delivery ofsuch media by including advertisements in the online media.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example system for metering thedistribution of online media to consumer devices.

FIG. 2A illustrates a presentation of an example online mediaapplication.

FIG. 2B is an example extensible markup language file for controllingthe presence and location of event notifications associated with onlinemedia.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an example implementation of theadvertisement crediting engine of FIG. 1 to credit advertisements inaccordance with this disclosure.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to implement the example advertisementcrediting engine of FIGS. 1 and/or 3 to credit advertisements.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to implement the example advertisementcrediting engine of FIGS. 1 and/or 3 to credit advertisements.

FIGS. 6-10 are flowcharts representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to implement the example advertisementdetecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 .

FIG. 11 is a block diagram of an example processor platform structuredto execute the instructions of FIGS. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 , and/or 10 toimplement the advertisement detecting engine of FIG. 1 .

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

As used herein, the term “primary media” refers to media that isselected by users for presentation and/or is otherwise the media that isprimarily being presented to users. The primary media may be movies,Internet videos, television episodes, radio shows, songs, news programs,etc. In the examples described herein, the primary media is onlinemedia.

As used herein, secondary media refers to media presented in conjunctionwith (e.g., inserted in, interleaved in, presented before, presentedafter, etc.) primary media such as advertisements, media associated withthe primary media, and/or media unassociated with the primary media.

As used herein, auxiliary data is data that provides information and/orcontrol instructions regarding the presentation of online mediaassociated with the auxiliary data. Auxiliary data may be contained inthe online media and/or may be available in another data structure suchas a file available from a server at a uniform resource locator (URL).In some examples, such auxiliary data may be stored or contained in aweb page associated with a URL (e.g., in hyper-text markup language(HTML) and/or in a cascading style sheet (CSS) code). In other examples,the auxiliary data is embedded in online media and must be extracted(e.g., embedded in a binary file such as an Adobe Flash video file). Forexample, the auxiliary data may be packaged in a container file used totransmit and/or present the online media.

As used herein, the phrase “in communication,” including variancesthereof, encompasses direct communication and/or indirect communicationthrough one or more intermediary components and does not require directphysical (e.g., wired) communication and/or constant communication, butrather additionally includes selective communication at periodic oraperiodic intervals, as well as one-time events.

Online media is frequently used to present live events. However, onlinemedia may also be used for non-live events (e.g., a timeshifted mediapresentation and/or video on demand presentation). Many people nowconsume online media by streaming the media via consumer devices likecomputers, game consoles, and/or mobile devices. In many instances, theonline media is presented in an application (e.g., a browser) thataccesses a web page that initiates an embedded streaming media playerfor media presentation. Even with such untraditional media distribution,there is a desire to provide revenue-promoting advertisements to suchonline consumers.

As used herein, the term “embedded” generally refers to a first objectenjoined with and/or inserted into a second object. In some examples,the first object and the second object are not readily distinguishablefrom one another in the second object. Some such examples of embeddingincludes advertisements inserted into streaming media, media playersinserted into web pages, applications inserted into web pages, etc.

In some environments, online media is associated with advertisementsthat are obtained “on demand.” In such environments, at a specifiedinterval during media presentation, an online media player obtains andpresents an advertisement that is not pre-embedded in the media and/orstored in the website. For example, at a specified time duringpresentation, a hyper-text transfer protocol (HTTP) “GET” request isexecuted by the online media player or the online media provider toobtain an advertisement to present to a consumer. Monitoring the “GET”requests originating from and/or associated with the presentation ofonline media allows audience measurement entities, such as The NielsenCompany (U.S.), LLC, to determine the identity of the advertisement andcredit the advertisement (and corresponding advertisement campaign) withexposure. For example, an audience measurement entity analyzes logs ofonline media traffic that are sent to the audience measurement entity.The audience measurement entity then provides reports includinganalytical data such as advertisement exposure and campaign reachdetermined from the logs.

In some other instances, consumers utilize advertisement blocking (alsoreferred to herein as “Ad-block”) software. Such Ad-block softwareprevents the presentation of advertisements in online media in a varietyof ways. For example, some Ad-blocking software blocks “GET” requests byfiltering requests that are not associated with currently presentingmedia and/or requests that are associated with known advertisingservers.

As advertisement blocking software has evolved, online media providershave varied their techniques for distributing advertisements. In somesystems, online media providers embed advertisements directly into theonline media itself. This approach increases the difficulty of blockingthe advertisements because no “GET” requests are involved and theadvertisements are integrated into the primary media (e.g., integratedinto the video and/or audio of the primary media). Unfortunately,advertisement embedding also increases the difficulty for audiencemeasurement entities to detect the advertisements using the priortechniques described above.

Example methods and apparatus disclosed herein detect and creditadvertisements and other secondary media embedded in online media (e.g.,primary media) using advertisement event notifications present in someonline media. Many embedded online media players indicate the presenceof advertisements and/or other secondary media using event notifications(e.g., visible marks, icons, graphical overlays, etc. and/or encodedevent notifications not visible on a rendered webpage) associated with adisplayed progress bar of the online media. However, the eventnotifications may also indicate the presence of other elements such as,for example, user comments, highlights of the media presentation, etc.In some examples, the event notifications are graphical representationsof instances in time at which secondary media (e.g., user comments,advertisements, highlights, etc.) will be presented during thepresentation of the online media.

The placement of event notifications in association with a progress barof an online media player is directed by online media providers. Forexample, the data directing the presence and/or location of the eventnotifications (e.g., visible marks, icons, graphical overlays, and/orencoded event notifications not visible on a rendered webpage) may beembedded in the primary media itself by the online media provider. Inother examples, the auxiliary data directing the presence and/orlocation of the event notifications may be encoded in the page data ofthe URL associated with the online media.

As disclosed herein, in some examples, to detect the presence and/orlocation of embedded event notifications, the primary media is decodedand analyzed to locate the embedded event notifications. Alternatively,as disclosed herein, the presence and/or location of event notificationsmay be detected in the page data of a web page associated with a URL(e.g., analyzing graphical interface code governing the rendering of theonline media presentation). In yet other examples, as disclosed herein,when the auxiliary data directing the presence and/or location of eventnotifications is not accessible, image detection methods may be used onthe page data of the web page associated with the URL to identify thepresence and/or location of the event notifications.

In examples disclosed herein, the locations (e.g., times) of the eventnotifications on the progress bar are extracted from the online mediaand/or the page data of the webpage associated with the online media. Insome disclosed examples, the locations of the event notifications inonline media are leveraged to detect and identify temporal location(s)that may include embedded advertisements in the online media.

In some examples, online media providers change, or rotate, theadvertisements presented in online media. For example, during viewing ofan online media (e.g., an episode of the television show “ModernFamily”) at a first time, an advertisement for a cleaning solution maybe served. During a subsequent viewing of the same online media (e.g.,the same episode of “Modern Family”), a different advertisement (e.g.,for a frozen meal) may be served. In some examples, the online mediaproviders associate a plurality of advertisements with particular onesof online media and the advertisements are rotated in and out of theonline media based on a variety of factors. Such factors may include,detected demographics of the user to which the online media is beingpresented (e.g., using cookies), time of online media presentation,online media consumption device type, online media browsing application,random selection, selection to meet contract requirements fromadvertisers, etc. Accordingly, were one to detect advertisements in asingle instance for a particular online media (e.g., by retrievingand/or analyzing the online media a single time), many of the possibleadvertisements associated with a particular online media may goundetected. Examples disclosed herein repeatedly access media todetermine the multitude of advertisements presented with the onlinemedia and/or rotation rates for those advertisements. For example, thedisclosed examples may utilize methods such as those disclosed in U.S.Pat. No. 8,661,111, which is hereby incorporated by reference in itsentirety.

In some examples disclosed herein, online media may be repeatedlyaccessed by an example advertisement detecting engine using a variety ofcookies, user agents, or other identifiers representative of differentdemographics or simulating other criteria used by media providers inselecting advertisements (e.g., web browser types), such that theadvertisements served to a particular demographic or other group may bedetected. For example, the episode of “Modern Family” may be accessed afirst number of times using a cookie that is associated with a Male age18-34 to detect the advertisements served to the Male age 18-34demographic associated with Modern Family. Subsequently, the episode ofModern Family may be accessed a second number of times using a cookieassociated with a Female age 35-49 to detect the advertisements servedto the Female age 35-49 demographic associated with “Modern Family.”

Example methods, apparatus, and articles of manufacture disclosed hereindetect and identify advertisements embedded in online media. The exampleadvertisement detecting engine disclosed herein obtains a list of URLsassociated with online media. The example advertisement detecting engineaccesses a URL identified in the list of URLs, analyzes page data(and/or data embedded in the online media) to determine the presenceand/or location of event notifications in the online media. Theadvertisement detecting engine repeatedly analyzes the online mediaserved at the URLs to detect the plurality of advertisements associatedwith the online media.

Example methods, apparatus, and articles of manufacture described hereinfurther analyze online media to detect temporal locations of mediafeatures such as scene changes, blank frames, audio silence, dramaticvolume shifts, etc. that often occur around the beginning and/or end ofan advertisement. For example, the media features may be detected atspecific times in the presentation of the online media. These detectedtimes (e.g., temporal locations) are stored and used in concert with thedetected event notifications to determine the presence of advertisementsin the online media. Example methods and apparatus disclosed hereinmatch, correlate, and/or associate temporal locations of (1) the eventnotifications and (2) the detected media features to detect and identifyembedded advertisements in online media. The example methods andapparatus disclosed herein improve the detection of advertisements bycombining the detection of event notifications and media features tomitigate the occurrence of “false detections” (e.g., when eventnotifications identifying comments and/or highlights of online mediadetected as advertisements). Once extracted, the advertisements may beidentified using known methods such as, for example, detection and/oridentification of media watermarking and/or signatures. In someexamples, the identified advertisements are stored in a database by anaudience measurement entity. For example, the advertisements may bestored in the database as associated with the corresponding online mediafrom which the advertisement was detected. That is, each advertisementdetected in conjunction with a particular show may be stored withdescriptive information denoting the particular show it was presentedwith. In other examples, the advertisements may be stored and/orassociated with descriptive information indicative of: a target audiencedemographic, detected demographics of the user to which the online mediais being presented (e.g., using cookies), a time of online mediapresentation, an online media consumption device type, online mediabrowsing application, and/or any additional and/or combination ofdescriptive information regarding the presentation of the advertisement.In some disclosed examples, methods and apparatus generate reportsproviding details regarding the detected advertisements and/ordescriptive information stored and/or associated with the advertisementsdetected in particular ones of online media.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example environment 100 in which examplemethods apparatus and/or articles of manufacture disclosed herein may beused for detecting advertisements embedded in online media. The exampleenvironment 100 includes the example consumer device 101, an examplenetwork 115, and the example online media provider 120, and an exampleaudience measurement entity 125. In the example of FIG. 1 , the audiencemeasurement entity 125, such as The Nielsen Company (U.S.), LLC,includes an example advertisement detecting engine 130 for detectingadvertisements embedded in online media distributed to consumer devices(e.g., the example consumer device 101) by the online media providers(e.g., the example online media provider 120).

The example consumer device 101 of the illustrated example may beimplemented by any device and accompanying software that supports onlineapplications and/or online media. For example, the example consumerdevice 101 may be a smart television, a tablet, a game console, a mobilephone, a smart phone, an online media device, a computer, a laptop, atablet, a Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) player, a Roku™ device, anInternet television apparatus (e.g., Google™ Chromecast™, Google™ TV,Apple™ TV, etc.) and/or other electronic devices and/or software. Theexample consumer device 101 communicates with the example online mediaprovider 120 using the network 115. In some examples, the exampleconsumer device 101 communicates with the example online media provider120 via the network 115 (e.g., to communicate media metering and/orlogging information).

In the illustrated example, the consumer device 101, accesses a URL forthe example online media provider 120 to obtain online media served bythe example media provider 120. To access the URL, a request for onlinemedia is transmitted to the example online media provider 120 via theexample network 115. The example online media provider 120 acknowledgesthe request, and provides the online media to the example consumerdevice 101 via the example network 115.

The example network 115 may be any type of communications network,(e.g., the Internet, a local area network, a wide area network, acellular data network, etc.) facilitated by a wired and/or wirelessconnection (e.g., a cable/DSL/satellite modem, a cell tower, etc.). Theexample network may be a local area network, a wide area network, or anycombination of networks.

The online media provider 120 of FIG. 1 provides data (e.g., media,online media, and/or web pages associated with online media) to bepresented on and/or through the consumer device 101 via the network 115.The example online provider 120 may be, for example, an onlinedistribution platform and associated server(s) for audio and/or videomedia, such as, for example, YouTube™, Spotify™, Vimeo™, Hulu™,WatchESPN™, ESPN Radio™, etc.

The example audience measurement entity 125 of the illustrated exampleis an entity gathering advertisement metrics and/or audience measurementstatistics such as, for example, The Nielsen Company (U.S.), LLC. Forexample, such an audience measurement entity may desire to determine thepossible advertisements served to a media consumer in association with aparticular online media.

The example advertisement detecting engine 130 is a device and/or one ormore other components connected to the example network 115 located at anaudience measurement entity. The advertisement detecting engine 130contains instructions to detect advertisements in online media.Alternatively, the example advertisement detecting engine 130 may belocated in a separate location from the audience measurement entity 125.For example, the example advertisement detecting engine 130 may be arouter, a gateway, a server, and/or any device capable of accessing andanalyzing online media (e.g., having a processing capability robustenough to perform multimedia processing instructions). For example, abroadband modem and/or router may contain instructions allowing them toact as an advertisement detecting engine 130. According to theillustrated example, the advertisement detecting engine 130 is adiscrete device capable of accessing a list of online media URLs andanalyzing the online media associated with the URLs.

Other network topologies than those illustrated in FIG. 1 may beutilized with the example methods and apparatus disclosed herein. Forexample, a proxy server may be included in the environment 100 to deploythe advertisement detecting engine 130. Additionally or alternatively,communications associated with the online media provider 120 (e.g.,communications between the example online media provider 120 and theexample consumer device 101) may be routed through the example audiencemeasurement entity 125 and/or mirrored to the example audiencemeasurement entity 125. In some such examples, the audience measuremententity 125 monitors and gathers information about the communicationswith or without information from other devices such as a proxy server.

In the illustrated example of FIG. 1 , the example advertisementdetecting engine 130 obtains a list of URLs associated with online mediafrom the example online media provider 120. Alternatively, the list ofURLs may be obtained from sources such as, for example, web-crawlingapplications, panel data from devices belonging to a panel of anaudience measurement entity, internet beacon data, and/or any suitableaggregator of popular online media URLs.

The example advertisement detecting engine 130 accesses each URLcontained in the list of URLs. As described below, the exampleadvertisement detecting engine 130 extracts data from the online mediaserved for each URL and/or data associated with the online media toattempt to determine the presence and/or location of eventnotifications. As discussed above, the presence and/or location of eventnotifications are determined from the auxiliary data associated with theonline media. For example, the auxiliary data may be analyzed by theadvertisement detecting engine 130 via string matching. That is, theauxiliary data is analyzed to identify and/or locate words and/orstrings of words (e.g., computer readable instructions) indicative ofevent notifications, such as, for example, markings on a progress bar(e.g., tick, diamond, icon, etc.).

In some examples, a location of an event notification is determined fromthe auxiliary data. That is, a temporal location in the progress of theonline media file is explicitly stated in a temporal value in the dataof the event notification. In other examples, the locations of eventnotifications are provided as locations relative to the length of aprogress bar of the online media. For example, event notificationlocations may be specified with relative locations when the online mediais presented by a media player that scales with the size of apresentation window. In such examples, further processing of the onlinemedia and/or page data may be performed to determine the length of theprogress bar and the duration of the online media file. The temporallocation of the event notifications is then determined using thefollowing equation:

According to the illustrated example, the example advertisementdetecting engine 130 downloads, extracts, and/or accesses the onlinemedia file from the URL and processes the online media file to identifytemporal locations of media features (e.g., blank frames, audio silence,dramatic volume shifts, etc.). For example, media feature detectionmethods such as those disclosed in Wright et al., U.S. PatentApplication Publication No. 2011/0157475 (which is hereby incorporatedherein by reference in its entirety) may be used.

The example advertisement detecting engine 130 compares the temporallocations of detected event notifications to the temporal locations ofdetected media features of the online media file. When the exampleadvertisement detecting engine 130 determines that a temporal locationof a detected media feature is within a detection window around atemporal location (e.g., one second before and/or after) of an eventnotification, the example advertisement detecting engine 130 determinesthat a start of an advertisement has been detected.

Online media may not include an event notification marking the end ofadvertisements. Accordingly, when an advertisement start has beendetected, the advertisement detecting engine 130 searches for mediafeatures temporally located at suspected advertisement durations fromthe detected advertisement start. For example, online advertisements aregenerally 15, 30, and/or 45 seconds in duration. Accordingly, theadvertisement detecting engine 130 will search for media features atsuspected advertisement end times that are at known durations from thedetected advertisement start (or any other time). When a media featureis detected at a suspected advertisement end time, the advertisementdetecting engine 130 designates this time and/or temporal location asthe end of the detected advertisement.

The example advertisement detecting engine 130 of the illustratedexample then extracts a portion of and/or the entirety of the onlinemedia file around the detected advertisement. In the illustratedexample, the detected advertisement is extracted using the determinedadvertisement start and advertisement end times. The exampleadvertisement detecting engine 130 identifies the advertisement andstores the advertisement as associated with and/or presented by thecorresponding online media. For example, a watermark and/or signatureare typically embedded in an advertisement and these features allow foridentification of the advertisements.

Signature-based media identification generally involves determining(e.g., generating and/or collecting) signature(s) representative of amedia signal (e.g., an audio signal and/or a video signal) output by amonitored media device and comparing the monitored signature(s) to oneor more references signatures corresponding to known (e.g., reference)media sources. Various comparison criteria, such as a cross-correlationvalue, a Hamming distance, etc., can be evaluated to determine whether amonitored signature matches a particular reference signature. When amatch between the monitored signature and one of the referencesignatures is found, the monitored media can be identified ascorresponding to the particular reference media represented by thereference signature that with matched the monitored signature. Becauseattributes, such as an identifier of the media, a presentation time, abroadcast channel, etc., are collected for the reference signature,these attributes may then be associated with the monitored media whosemonitored signature matched the reference signature. Example systems foridentifying media based on codes and/or signatures are long known andwere first disclosed in Thomas, U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,294, which is herebyincorporated by reference in its entirety.

FIG. 2A illustrates an example online media presentation 201, executingon one of the example consumer devices 101. The example online mediapresentation 201 of this example presents media obtained from the onlinemedia provider 120 on the corresponding example consumer device 101. Thegraphical user interface of the online media presentation 201 presentsdata relevant to the presentation of the online media. For example, theonline media presentation 201 of FIG. 2 includes an example elapsed timeindicator 202 to display a length of the media presentation session anda total length of the media. An example file ID indicator 203 displaysthe filename of the online media being presented.

The example online media presentation 201 includes an example bandwidthindication field 204 to display the current bandwidth usage rate of theonline media presentation 201. An example time remaining indicator 206displays the predicted end time of the media presentation as indicatedby the example consumer device 101. An example progress bar 208 displaysa graphical representation of the time progress of the mediapresentation based on the values of the example elapsed time indicator202 and the example time remaining indicator 206.

In the illustrated example, advertisements and/or comments are embeddedin the online media and the start time at which the advertisementsand/or comments appear as denoted by event notifications 210, 212, 214in the example progress bar 208. Based on the status shown in theexample progress bar 208, the online media presentation 201 of FIG. 2Ahas already presented advertisements and/or comments at the two timesassociated with the example first and second event notifications 210,212. Accordingly, the online media presentation 201 will present a thirdadvertisement when the progress of the online media reaches a third timeassociated with the example third event notification 214.

FIG. 2B illustrates example data 250 that controls the presence and/orlocation of the event notifications 210, 212, 214 depicted in theexample FIG. 2A. A first block of data 210 d controls the presence andlocation of the first example event notification 210 of FIG. 2A. In theillustrated example, the first block of data contains informationregarding the placement of the advertisement. For example, first block210 d contains a time element (e.g., <Time>180</Time>). The time elementdenotes a time value in seconds (e.g., 180 seconds) from the start ofthe online media for the location of the first event notification 210 inthe progress bar 208 of the example online media presentation 201. Thatis, the first event notification 210 will be placed at the one hundredand eighty (180) second mark in the example progress bar 208.

The first block 210 d also contains data regarding the display of thefirst event notification 210. For example, the shape category denotesthat the depiction of the event notification 210 is to be a diamondshape named “event 1” of a white color (e.g., hex-code color “FFFFFF”).

Similarly, a second block of data 212 d and a third block of data 214 dcontrol the presence and location of the second example eventnotification 212 and third example event notification 214 of FIG. 2Arespectively. For example, the second block of data 212 d denotes thatthe second event notification 212 is to be displayed as a white diamondat the five hundred and twenty second mark on the progress bar 208. As afurther example, the third block of data 214 d denotes that the thirdevent notification 214 should be displayed as a white diamond at theseven hundred and ten second mark on the progress bar 208.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an example implementation of the exampleadvertisement detecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 . The example advertisementdetecting engine 130 of FIG. 3 is provided with an example mediaretriever 305, an example event notification detector 310, an examplemedia feature detector 315, an example correlator 320, an exampleextractor 325, an example identifier 330, and an example reportgenerator 335.

The example media retriever 305 of FIG. 3 accesses the URLs in a list ofURLs to obtain the online media and/or data associated with the onlinemedia. For example, the list of URLs may contain URLs detected by a webcrawling program used to validate hyperlinks associated with an onlinemedia provider (e.g., online media provider 120). In the example FIG. 3, the media retriever 305 is in communication with an example eventnotification detector 310 and an example media feature detector 315. Theexample media retriever 305 of the illustrated example acquires,downloads, and/or accesses data associated with the online media, suchas, for example, auxiliary data. As used herein, auxiliary data refersto data contained in, or associated with, the online media and/or datacontained in a URL associated with the online media. In some examples,such auxiliary data may be acquired from the web page associated withthe URL (e.g., hyper-text markup language (HTML) and/or cascading stylesheet (CSS) code). In other examples, such auxiliary data is containedin the online media and must be extracted. For example, the auxiliarydata may include the data controlling the presence and/or location ofevent notifications. Such auxiliary data may be contained in a containerfile such as a flash video file (e.g., an “fly” file). Thus, thecontainer file must be unpackaged and/or decoded by the media retriever305 in order to acquire the auxiliary data. The example media retriever305 transmits the auxiliary data to the example event notificationdetector 310.

Because online media may include randomly inserted and/or rotatingadvertisements, the example media retriever 305 may acquire, access,and/or download the online media file multiple times so that the examplemedia feature detector 315 may detect the majority of advertisementsassociated with the online media. The example media retriever 305transmits the retrieved online media file to the example media featuredetector 315 upon each acquisition, access, and/or download in the eventthat the lengths and/or positions of the advertisements change from oneacquisition, access, and/or download to the next.

The example event notification detector 310 of the illustrated exampleof FIG. 3 analyzes the auxiliary data extracted by the example mediaretriever 305 to determine the presence and/or location of eventnotifications (e.g., by analyzing data controlling the presence and/orlocation of event notifications such as the example data illustrated inFIG. 2B). For example, the event notification detector 310 may analyzethe auxiliary data for data controlling the presence and/or location ofevent notifications such as metadata, variables, and/or stringsindicative of event notifications in a progress bar and/or secondarymedia acquisitions.

In some examples, when the example event notification detector 310determines that the temporal location of the event notifications withrespect to the online media file and/or the progress bar are notaccessible in the auxiliary data (e.g., the data is encrypted orotherwise not accessible by the event notification detector 310), theevent notification detector 310 determines a temporal location of theevent notifications by analyzing the relative location of the eventnotifications displayed on the progress bar while the online media ispresented. For example, the event notification detector 310 may renderthe presentation of the online media to detect the depiction of theprogress bar and determine its length in pixels (or any other unit ofmeasurement). The event notification detector 310 can also detectanomalies indicative of event notifications in the depiction of theprogress bar (e.g., shapes, varying colors, and/or overlays). Thisdetection may be performed using image and/or video recognition anddetection techniques. The event notification detector 310 can determinea temporal location of the event notifications with respect to theonline media using Equation 1.

Regardless of the method of detecting the event notifications, thetemporal location(s) of the event notifications are transmitted to theexample correlator 320 by the example event notification detector 310.

The example media feature detector 315 obtains the online media filedownloaded by the example media retriever 305. In the illustratedexample, the example media feature detector 315 is in communication withthe example media retriever 305 and the example correlator 320. Theonline media file is analyzed for media features by the example mediafeature detector 315. Example media features detected by the examplemedia feature detector 315 that may be indicative of an advertisementinclude blank frames, audio silence, dramatic volume shifts, etc. When amedia is detected, the temporal location of the detected media featureis recorded by the example media feature detector 315. As explainedabove, the detected media features may be used in concert with thedetected event notifications to determine the start of advertisementsembedded in the online media, and may further be used to detect the endof the advertisements. The temporal locations of the detected mediafeatures are transmitted to the example correlator 320.

The example media feature detector 315 also tracks the duration of theprimary media and the total online media presentation. That is, in someinstances, the duration of the primary media presented in an onlinemedia presentation may be three minutes. However, with the incorporationof three thirty-second advertisements into the online mediapresentation, the duration of the online media presentation would befour minutes and thirty seconds. These durations are used by the examplecorrelator 320 to validate the detected advertisements as explained infurther detail below.

The example correlator 320 obtains the temporal locations of the eventnotifications determined by the example event notification detector 310and the temporal locations of the media features determined by theexample media feature detector 315 and determines temporal locationswhere event notifications and media features closely correspond. Theexample correlator 320 of the illustrated example FIG. 3 is incommunication with the example event notification detector 310, theexample media feature detector 315 and the example extractor 325.

In the illustrated example, the example correlator 320 uses the temporallocations of the event notifications as guideposts. That is, the eventnotifications are used as the primary indicator of a presence of anadvertisement and the temporal locations of the media features arecompared to the temporal locations of the event notifications.Alternatively, the temporal locations of the media features can be usedas the guideposts and the temporal locations of the event notificationsmay be compared to the temporal locations of the media features.Temporal locations where event notifications and media features closelycorrespond (e.g., match, correlate, align, etc.) are detected when acomparison to a guidepost is within a window of time from the guidepost(e.g., a window of +/identified, which correspond to starting times ofadvertisements, are stored by the example correlator 320 and/ortransmitted to the example extractor 325.

The example correlator 320 also detects end times of advertisements. Forexample, the example correlator 320 searches for media features atsuspected advertisement durations from the matching temporal locationsdetermined as advertisement start times. As explained above, onlineadvertisements generally have 15, 30, or 45 second durations.Accordingly, the example correlator 320 searches for media features atsuspected advertisement durations from the detected advertisement start.When a media feature is detected at a suspected advertisement end time,the example correlator 320 designates this time and/or temporal locationas the end of the detected advertisement. The end times of the detectedadvertisements are stored by the example correlator 320 and/ortransmitted to the example extractor 325.

The example correlator 320 also determines if the durations (e.g., thespan from detected start to detected end time) of the detectedadvertisements are valid. For example, if the duration of the primarymedia determined by the example correlator 320 is three minutes and theduration of the online media presentation determined by the examplecorrelator 320 is four minutes, the correlator 320 determines that oneminute of advertising time occurred during the online media presentation(e.g., the one minute of advertisements extended the play time fromthree minutes of media to four minutes of total play time). Thus, if thecorrelator 320 detected two advertisements of thirty second durations,the duration of the total advertisements is equal to the advertisingtime determined by the example correlator 320. However, if the totalduration of the detected advertisements is not equal to the advertisingtime determined by the example correlator 320, the example correlator320 produces an error message and repeats the method to detectadvertisements in the online media.

The example extractor 325 obtains the determined start and end times ofdetected advertisements and extracts a portion of the online media, theportion starting from the matching temporal location determined by theexample correlator 320 and ending at the detected end time. In theillustrated example, the example extractor 325 is in communication withthe example correlator 320 and the example identifier 330. The exampleextractor 325 utilizes a media editing suite of algorithms forextracting the corresponding portion of the online media file.Alternatively, the example extractor 325 may record excerpts of theonline media in lieu of actual extraction of the advertisement. In theillustrated example, the example extractor 325 extracts a portion of theonline media from the determined start time of the advertisement to thedetermined end time of the advertisement. The extracted advertisementensures that enough media is obtained to properly identify theadvertisement using one of watermarking and/or signatures embedded inthe advertisement. To this end, the extracted portions of the onlinemedia file are transmitted to the example identifier 330 foridentification.

The example identifier 330 obtains the extracted portions of the onlinemedia file (e.g., potential advertisements) and analyzes the extractedportions to identify the advertisements using watermarks and/orsignatures. The example identifier 330 of FIG. 3 is in communicationwith the example extractor 325 and the example report generator 335. Inthe illustrated example, the example identifier 330 analyzes theextracted portions for Nielsen® codes. Alternatively, however, anywatermarking, signature, image, audio, and/or metadata analysis may beperformed by the example identifier 330 to identify the advertisement inthe extracted portion of the online media file. When the advertisementin the extracted portion is identified, the example identifier 330stores the identified advertisement as associated with and/or presentedby the online media.

The example report generator 335 stores and/or transmits the identifiedadvertisements and/or associated online media to a data collectionfacility located at and/or remote from, the audience measurement entity125. In some examples, the example report generator 335 may performother actions in response to identifying advertisements, such as,providing real-time reports of detected advertisements. In otherexamples, the report generator 335 may generate reports of all onlinemedia associated with a particular one or group of advertisements.

While an example manner of implementing the example advertisementdetecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 is illustrated in FIG. 3 , one or more ofthe elements, processes and/or devices illustrated in FIG. 3 may becombined, divided, re-arranged, omitted, eliminated and/or implementedin any other way. Further, the example media retriever 305, the exampleevent notification detector 310, the example media feature detector 315,the example correlator 320, the example extractor 325, the exampleidentifier 330, the example report generator 335, and/or, moregenerally, the example advertisement detecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 maybe implemented by hardware, software, firmware and/or any combination ofhardware, software and/or firmware. Thus, for example, any of theexample media retriever 305, the example event notification detector310, the example media feature detector 315, the example correlator 320,the example extractor 325, the example identifier 330, the examplereport generator 335, and/or, more generally, the example advertisementdetecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 could be implemented by one or moreanalog or digital circuit(s), logic circuits, programmable processor(s),application specific integrated circuit(s) (ASIC(s)), programmable logicdevice(s) (PLD(s)) and/or field programmable logic device(s) (FPLD(s)).When reading any of the apparatus or system claims of this patent tocover a purely software and/or firmware implementation, at least one ofthe example, media retriever 305, the example event notificationdetector 310, the example media feature detector 315, the examplecorrelator 320, the example extractor 325, the example identifier 330,or the example report generator 335 is/are hereby expressly defined toinclude a tangible computer readable storage device or storage disk suchas a memory, a digital versatile disk (DVD), a compact disk (CD), aBlu-ray disk, etc. storing the software and/or firmware. Further still,the example advertisement detecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 may include oneor more elements, processes and/or devices in addition to, or insteadof, those illustrated in FIG. 3 , and/or may include more than one ofany or all of the illustrated elements, processes and devices.

Flowcharts representative of example machine readable instructions forimplementing the advertisement detecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 are shownin FIGS. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 . In these examples, the machinereadable instructions comprise a program for execution by a processorsuch as the processor 1112 shown in the example processor platform 1100discussed below in connection with FIG. 11 . The program may be embodiedin software stored on a tangible computer readable storage medium suchas a CD-ROM, a floppy disk, a hard drive, a digital versatile disk(DVD), a Blu-ray disk, or a memory associated with the processor 1112,but the entire program and/or parts thereof could alternatively beexecuted by a device other than the processor 1112 and/or embodied infirmware or dedicated hardware. Further, although the example program isdescribed with reference to the flowcharts illustrated in FIGS. 4, 5, 6,7, 8, 9, and 10 , many other methods of implementing the exampleadvertisement detecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 may alternatively be used.For example, the order of execution of the blocks may be changed, and/orsome of the blocks described may be changed, eliminated, or combined.

As mentioned above, the example processes of FIGS. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and10 may be implemented using coded instructions (e.g., computer and/ormachine readable instructions) stored on a tangible computer readablestorage medium such as a hard disk drive, a flash memory, a read-onlymemory (ROM), a compact disk (CD), a digital versatile disk (DVD), acache, a random-access memory (RAM) and/or any other storage device orstorage disk in which information is stored for any duration (e.g., forextended time periods, permanently, for brief instances, for temporarilybuffering, and/or for caching of the information). As used herein, theterm tangible computer readable storage medium is expressly defined toinclude any type of computer readable storage device and/or storage diskand to exclude propagating signals and to exclude transmission media. Asused herein, “tangible computer readable storage medium” and “tangiblemachine readable storage medium” are used interchangeably. Additionallyor alternatively, the example processes of FIGS. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and10 may be implemented using coded instructions (e.g., computer and/ormachine readable instructions) stored on a nontransitory computer and/ormachine readable medium such as a hard disk drive, a flash memory, aread-only memory, a compact disk, a digital versatile disk, a cache, arandom-access memory and/or any other storage device or storage disk inwhich information is stored for any duration (e.g., for extended timeperiods, permanently, for brief instances, for temporarily buffering,and/or for caching of the information). As used herein, the termnon-transitory computer readable medium is expressly defined to includeany type of computer readable storage device and/or storage disk and toexclude propagating signals and to exclude transmission media. As usedherein, when the phrase “at least” is used as the transition term in apreamble of a claim, it is open-ended in the same manner as the term“comprising” is open ended.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to implement the example advertisementdetecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 . The example program 400 may beinitiated, for example, when a list of URLs for online media is obtainedby the advertisement detecting engine 130, or more specifically, themedia retriever 305 from the example online media provider 120 (block405).

The example media retriever 305 accesses a first URL indicated in thelist of URLs via a network (e.g., the example network 115 of FIG. 1 )(block 410). The example media retriever 305 acquires, downloads, and/oraccesses the primary media (e.g., the online media) associated with theURL accessed at block 410 (block 415). In some examples, the examplemedia retriever 305 determines an address, location, etc. of the primarymedia associated with the URL from data retrieved at the URL andacquires, downloads, and/or accesses the primary media via the network.Alternatively, the media retriever 305 may generate a recording of theprimary media if acquiring, downloading, and/or accessing of the primarymedia fails and/or the primary media is unavailable for download (e.g.,due to restrictions imposed by the example online media provider 120).The example media retriever 305 then obtains auxiliary data associatedwith the primary media (block 420).

The advertisement detecting engine 130 then identifies advertisementsincluded in (e.g., embedded in) the primary media (block 425). Examplemethods to identify the media are discussed in conjunction with FIGS. 5,6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 . When the advertisements are detected in the primarymedia by the example advertisement detecting engine 130, the examplemedia retriever 305 determines if the primary media has been accessed asufficient number of times to detect the rotating advertisementspresented in conjunction with the primary media. For example, the mediaretriever 305 may determine if no previously unseen advertisements areidentified for a threshold number of retrievals. If the primary mediahas not been acquired, downloaded, and/or accessed a sufficient numberof times, control proceeds to block 435. However, if at block 430, themedia retriever 305 determines that the primary media has been acquired,downloaded, and/or accessed a sufficient number of times to detect theadvertisements associated with the primary media, control proceeds toblock 440.

If the example media retriever 305 determines that the online media hasnot been retrieved a sufficient number of times (block 430), the mediaretriever 305 obtains the primary media associated with the URL onceagain so that advertisements may be detected from the primary media(block 435). Control returns to block 425 to identify advertisement(s)embedded in the retrieved online media.

At block 440, the example media retriever 305 determines if more URLsremain in the list of URLs for advertisement detection. If more URLsremain, control proceeds to block 445 where the example media retriever305 accesses the next URL. However, if no more URLs remain to beaccessed, control terminates and/or suspends until such time that a newlist of URLs is provided to the example advertisement detecting engine130. For example, a further scan by a robot and/or web crawler mayreveal online media that has not previously been analyzed to identifyadvertisements. Alternatively, the example online media provider 120 maysend a list of URLs (e.g., newly added URLs) to the audience measuremententity 125.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to implement block 425 of example FIG.4 to identify advertisements included in (e.g., embedded in) the primarymedia. The example instructions begin when primary media and auxiliarydata are obtained by the example media retriever 305 so thatadvertisements may be detected in online media.

The event notification detector 310 accesses the acquired, downloaded,and/or accessed auxiliary data and/or the accessed primary media so thatmedia features may be detected (block 505). The example eventnotification detector 310 of the illustrated example FIG. 5 analyzes theobtained auxiliary data using string searching (e.g., using knownstrings that denote event notifications) to locate data directing thepresence and/or location of the event notifications (e.g., visiblemarks, icons, graphical overlays, and/or encoded event notifications notvisible on a rendered webpage) (block 510).

In some examples, where auxiliary data is not accessible and/or is notavailable, the event notification detector 310 may detect eventnotifications by rendering the online media presentation and detectingevent notifications through image recognition techniques. The eventnotification detector 310 can detect the depiction of the progress barin the rendered online media presentation through heuristic trainingand/or image recognition techniques and determine the length of theprogress bar in pixels. The event notification detector 310 also detectsgraphical indicators indicative of event notifications in the depictionof the progress bar using the heuristic training and/or imagerecognition techniques (e.g., shapes, colors, and/or overlays).

If event notifications are detected in the auxiliary data by the exampleevent notification detector 310, the example event notification detector310 proceeds with detecting the event notifications. An example methodfor detecting event notifications is described in conjunction with FIG.6 .

In the illustrated example FIG. 5 , if no event notifications aredetected in the auxiliary data by the event notification detector 310,the example instructions terminate. However, in some examples, theinstructions do not terminate when no event notifications are detected.Instead, the instructions may proceed to block 515 and continue toattempt to detect advertisements in the online media using only detectedmedia features. For example, the online media may be analyzed at thelocation of media features to determine if the media is a knownadvertisement (e.g., by analyzing a code or signature extracted (orgenerated) from the online media after a media feature).

At block 515, the example media feature detector 315 analyzes theacquired, downloaded, and/or accessed primary media to identify mediafeatures such as blank frames, audio silence, dramatic volume shifts,etc. (block 515). An example method to identify media features isdescribed in conjunction with FIG. 7 .

The example correlator 320 detects the locations and/or durations of theadvertisements in the primary media based on the event notifications andthe media features (block 520). An example method to determineadvertisement locations is described in conjunction with FIG. 8 . Whenthe advertisements have been detected by the example correlator 320, theexample correlator 320 validates the duration of the detectedadvertisements using the duration of the primary media and the durationof the online media presentation as determined by the example mediaretriever 305 (block 525). An example method to validate advertisementlocations is described in conjunction with FIG. 9 . When the detectedadvertisements are validated, the example identifier 330 determines theidentity of the advertisements (block 530). An example method todetermine the identity of advertisements is described in conjunctionwith FIG. 10 . When the advertisements have been identified by theexample identifier 330, the process of FIG. 5 ends. For example, controlmay return to block 430.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to implement block 512 of example FIG.5 . The example instructions begin when control arrives at block 512 ofexample FIG. 5 .

As explained above, the event notification detector 310 analyzes theauxiliary data using string searching for indications of data directingthe presence and/or location of the event notifications (e.g., visiblemarks, icons, graphical overlays, and/or encoded event notifications notvisible on a rendered webpage) (block 605 and block 610). The eventnotification detector 310 accesses the data directing the presenceand/or location of the first event notification to determine thelocation of the event notification (block 615). In some examples, thedata directing the presence and/or location of the event notificationcontains a temporal location of the event notification that isaccessible by the event notification detector 310. In other examples,the event notification detector 310 determines, using image recognition,that a graphical indicator of an event notification is in a progress barof the online media presentation. In such examples, at block 615, theevent notification detector 310 determines the location of the graphicalindicator of the event notification is within the progress bar.

At block 620, the example event notification detector 310 converts thelocation of the event notification to a temporal location with respectto the duration of the primary media using Equation 1 provided above.Alternatively, where the temporal location of the event notification isindicated directly by the auxiliary data, it may not be necessary tocalculate the temporal location using Equation 1. The event notificationdetector 310 stores, caches, and/or archives the temporal location ofthe event notification for later use by the example correlator 320(block 625). At block 630, the example event notification detector 310analyzes the auxiliary data to determine if there are additional eventnotifications. If another event notification is detected in theauxiliary data, the next event notification is accessed (block 635) andcontrol returns to block 620 to analyze the next event notification. Ifno more event notifications are detected in the auxiliary data, theprocess of FIG. 6 ends. For example, control may return to block 515 ofFIG. 5 .

FIG. 7 is a flowchart representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to determine media feature locations.For example, the process of FIG. 7 may be used to implement block 515 ofexample FIG. 5 .

At block 705, the media feature detector 315 analyzes the primary mediato detect media features of the primary media. For example, at block705, media features such as blank frames, audio silence, dramatic volumeshifts, or other features that are indicative of a change in media(e.g., a transition that may indicate the start of an embeddedadvertisement) may be detected in the primary media. In some examples,the media feature detector 315 may be configured to only search formedia features in temporal locations around event notifications. Forexample, if an event notification is detected at 75 seconds into theprimary media, the media feature detector 320 may search for mediafeatures located between one second before or one second after the eventnotification. The media feature detector may further search foradditional media features located one second before or one second aftersuspected advertisement durations from the event notification. That is,the media feature detector may search for an end of the advertisement at15 seconds from the event notification (90 seconds of the totalduration), 30 seconds from the event notification (105 seconds of thetotal duration), 45 seconds from the event notification (120 seconds ofthe total duration), etc. so that media features indicative of the endof the advertisement may be detected.

When the primary media has been analyzed, the example media featuredetector 315 determines the temporal locations and/or times at which themedia features occurred (block 710). The example media feature detector315 stores, caches, and/or archives the temporal location of the mediafeatures for later use by the example correlator 320 (block 715). Whenthe temporal locations of the media features have been stored, theprocess of FIG. 7 ends. For example, control may return to block 520 ofFIG. 5 .

FIG. 8 is a flowchart representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to determine locations ofadvertisements in online media. For example, the process of FIG. 8 maybe used to implement block 520 of example FIG. 5 .

The example correlator 320 obtains temporal locations of eventnotifications from the example event notification detector 310 (block805). The example correlator 320 also obtains temporal locations ofmedia features from the example media feature detector 315 (block 810).At block 815, the example correlator 320 compares the temporal locationsof the event notifications to the temporal locations of the detectedmedia features to identify temporal locations where an eventnotification and a detected media feature are within a threshold amountof time (e.g., less than or equal to one second apart) (block 815). Ifthe example correlator 320 determines that a temporal location of amedia feature is within the threshold time from the temporal location ofan event notification, the temporal location of the media feature isidentified as an advertisement start location (block 820). In someexamples, instead of identifying the temporal location of the mediafeature as the advertisement start location, the example correlator 320may alternatively identify the corresponding event notification temporallocation as the advertisement start location at block 820.

If no match is detected for a given event notification, the examplecorrelator 320 proceeds to determine if another event notification(e.g., event notification time) is to be used to detect advertisements(block 816). If another event notification time is detected by theexample correlator 320, the example correlator 320 accesses the nextevent notification time (block 845) and control returns to block 815. Ifno other event notification time is detected by the example correlator320, the process of FIG. 8 ends. For example, control may return toblock 525 of FIG. 5 .

Returning to block 820, when the example correlator 320 determines thestart time of the advertisement, control proceeds to block 825. At block825, the example correlator 320 searches for a temporal location of amedia feature (and/or media feature) at suspected end times ofadvertisements. For example, the example correlator 320 will look for atemporal locations of a media feature (and/or media feature) detected 15seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, etc. from the identified start time ofthe advertisement. If the example correlator 320 does not detect atemporal location of a media feature (and/or media feature) at asuspected advertisement end time, control proceeds to block 816 wherethe example correlator determines if more event notifications aredetected.

In some examples, at block 825, if a temporal location of a mediafeature (and/or media feature) is not detected at a suspectedadvertisement end time, the example correlator 320 may be configured tocreate an advertisement end time at a specific duration from thedetected start time. For example, if the minimum duration ofadvertisements are known (e.g., 15 seconds) then creating anadvertisement end time 15 seconds from the identified start time mayensure that at least a portion of the advertisement may be extracted andidentified by the example extractor 325 and the example identifier 330.

If a temporal location of a media feature (and/or media feature) isdetected at a suspected advertisement end time in block 825, the examplecorrelator 320 identifies the temporal location of the media feature asthe end time of the advertisement (block 830). The example correlator320 then stores the identified start and end times of the advertisement(block 835). The example correlator 320 proceeds to determine if anotherevent notification (e.g., event notification time) is to be used todetect advertisements (block 840). If another event notification time isdetected by the example correlator 320, the example correlator 320accesses the next event notification time (block 845). If no other eventnotification time is detected by the example correlator 320, the processof FIG. 8 ends. For example, control may return to block 525 of FIG. 5 .

FIG. 9 is a flowchart representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to validate the durations ofadvertisements detected in the online media. For example, the process ofFIG. 9 may be used to implement block 525 of example FIG. 5 .

The example event notification detector 310 determines the duration ofthe primary media (e.g., the duration without embedded advertisements)from the auxiliary data by searching for data denoting the duration ofthe primary media (block 905). Alternatively, in some examples, themedia retriever 305 may determine the duration of the primary media whenthe primary media is obtained (e.g., at block 415 of FIG. 4 ).

The media feature detector 315 also determines the duration of theonline media presentation (block 910). For example, the duration of theonline media presentation is the combined duration of the primary mediaand the advertisements. For example, the media feature detector 315 maydetermine the duration of the online media presentation by tracking theduration of the presentation during processing.

The example correlator 320 determines the difference of time between theduration of the primary media and the duration of the online mediapresentation to determine the total duration of embedded advertisements(block 915).

The example correlator 320 compares the total duration calculated atblock 915 to the duration of all the advertisements detected in block525 (e.g., FIG. 8 ) (block 920). If the duration of the detectedadvertisements in FIG. 8 is equal or approximately equal (e.g., withinfive seconds, within 5% of the total length, etc.) to the differencebetween the duration of the primary media and the duration of the onlinemedia presentation, the example correlator 320 declares and/or marks thedetected advertisements as validated (block 925).

If the total duration of the detected advertisements and the calculatedtotal duration are not equal or within a margin of error, the examplecorrelator 930 generates an error (block 930). In some examples, such anerror message may cause the advertisement detecting engine 130 to repeatthe process of detecting advertisements and/or detecting one of mediafeatures and/or event notifications.

When the example correlator 320 has validated and/or produced an error,the process of FIG. 9 ends. For example, control may return to block 530of FIG. 5 .

FIG. 10 is a flowchart representative of example machine readableinstructions that may be executed to identify advertisements detected inonline media. For example, the process of FIG. 10 may be used toimplement block 530 of example FIG. 5 .

The example extractor 325 obtains the validated start and end times foran advertisement determined by the example correlator 320 (e.g., thestart and end time determined at block 520 and/or the process of FIG. 8) (block 1005). The example extractor 325 extracts a portion of theprimary media that starts at the obtained start time and ends at the endtime (block 1010). In some examples, the example extractor 325 may usevideo editing algorithms to perform such extraction. In other examples,the example extractor 325 may record and/or copy the portion of theprimary media and store the recording and/or the copy as the detectedadvertisement.

The example identifier 330 obtains the extracted, recorded, and/orcopied portion of the primary media and identifies the advertisementusing one of audio watermarks, signatures, and/or image recognitiontechniques (block 1020). Alternatively, any other process foridentifying media may be used. The example identifier 330 stores theidentified advertisement as presented by and/or associated with theprimary media. In some examples, the example identifier 330 also storesand/or associates a cookie or other identifier used by the advertisementdetecting engine 130 when obtaining the primary media. For example, thecookie or other identifier may correspond to a user and/or profilerepresenting a specific demographic. Storing and/or associating thecookie or other identifier used to obtain the primary media allows theadvertisement detecting engine 130 to determine which advertisements aredetected in association with a specific demographic.

The example extractor 325 determines if more advertisements are to beidentified (block 1020). For example, the example extractor 325 maydetermine if more advertisements were detected by the example correlator320. If more advertisements were detected, control proceeds to block1005. If no more advertisements were detected from the primary media,the example report generator 335 generates a report of the identifiedadvertisements. In some examples, the report generator 335 generates areport of advertisements presented by demographic. For example, someadvertisements are targeted and/or served to specific demographics by anonline media provider 120. Using the cookie or other identifierassociated with the detected advertisement, a report may be generatedaccording to demographics. For example, a report of advertisementsserved to the Male aged 18-34 demographic would include informationassociated with advertisements detected by the advertisement detectingengine 130 while using a cookie or other identifier corresponding to aMale aged 18-34. In other examples, the report generator 335 stores, ina database, identified advertisements as associated with and/orpresented in conjunction with a corresponding primary media. Forexample, the identified advertisements may be stored as associated witha show, with a particular episode of a show, a genre of shows, and/or anonline media provider (e.g., online media provider 120 of FIG. 1 ). Forexample, the report generator 335 may store a list of advertisementsthat were detected over multiple retrievals of the online media.

FIG. 11 is a block diagram of an example processor platform 1100 capableof executing the instructions of FIGS. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 toimplement the application detecting engine 130 of FIG. 1 . The processorplatform 1100 can be, for example, a server, a personal computer, amobile device (e.g., a cell phone, a smart phone, a tablet such as aniPadTM), a personal digital assistant (PDA), an Internet appliance, aDVD player, a CD player, a digital video recorder, a Blu-ray player, agaming console, a personal video recorder, a set top box, or any othertype of computing device.

The processor platform 1100 of the illustrated example includes aprocessor 1112. The processor 1112 of the illustrated example ishardware. For example, the processor 1112 can be implemented by one ormore integrated circuits, logic circuits, microprocessors or controllersfrom any desired family or manufacturer.

The processor 1112 of the illustrated example includes a local memory1113 (e.g., a cache). The processor 1112 of the illustrated example isin communication with a main memory including a volatile memory 1114 anda non-volatile memory 1116 via a bus 1118. The volatile memory 1114 maybe implemented by Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory (SDRAM),Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), RAMBUS Dynamic Random Access Memory(RDRAM) and/or any other type of random access memory device. Thenon-volatile memory 1116 may be implemented by flash memory and/or anyother desired type of memory device. Access to the main memory 1114,1116 is controlled by a memory controller.

The processor platform 1100 of the illustrated example also includes aninterface circuit 1120. The interface circuit 1120 may be implemented byany type of interface standard, such as an Ethernet interface, auniversal serial bus (USB), and/or a PCI express interface.

In the illustrated example, one or more input devices 1122 are connectedto the interface circuit 1120. The input device(s) 1122 permit(s) a userto enter data and commands into the processor 1112. The input device(s)can be implemented by, for example, an audio sensor, a microphone, acamera (still or video), a keyboard, a button, a mouse, a touchscreen, atrack-pad, a trackball, isopoint and/or a voice recognition system.

One or more output devices 1124 are also connected to the interfacecircuit 1120 of the illustrated example. The output devices 1124 can beimplemented, for example, by display devices (e.g., a light emittingdiode (LED), an organic light emitting diode (OLED), a liquid crystaldisplay, a cathode ray tube display (CRT), a touchscreen, a tactileoutput device, a printer and/or speakers). The interface circuit 1120 ofthe illustrated example, thus, typically includes a graphics drivercard, a graphics driver chip or a graphics driver processor.

The interface circuit 1120 of the illustrated example also includes acommunication device such as a transmitter, a receiver, a transceiver, amodem and/or network interface card to facilitate exchange of data withexternal machines (e.g., computing devices of any kind) via a network1126 (e.g., an Ethernet connection, a digital subscriber line (DSL), atelephone line, coaxial cable, a cellular telephone system, etc.).

The processor platform 1100 of the illustrated example also includes oneor more mass storage devices 1128 for storing software and/or data.Examples of such mass storage devices 1128 include floppy disk drives,hard drive disks, compact disk drives, Blu-ray disk drives, RAIDsystems, and digital versatile disk (DVD) drives.

The processor platform 1100 also includes the example media retriever305, the example event notification detector 310, the example mediafeature detector 315, the example correlator 320, the example extractor325, the example identifier 330, and the example report generator 335.

The coded instructions 1132 of FIGS. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 may bestored in the mass storage device 1128, in the volatile memory 1114, inthe non-volatile memory 1116, and/or on a removable tangible computerreadable storage medium such as a CD or DVD 1136.

From the foregoing, it will be appreciated that the above disclosedmethods and apparatus detect advertisements embedded in online media.Additionally, the disclosed examples provide for the ability to detectadvertisements embedded in online media without having to access aconsumer device. In this way, it may be beneficial to audiencemeasurement entities and/or data collection facilities to unobtrusivelydetect advertisements served in conjunction with online media.

Utilizing the central advertisement detecting engine reduces bandwidthconsumed by tracking advertisements served at monitored households. In ahousehold with limited bandwidth, by remotely detecting advertisementsembedded in online media, an audience measurement entity would notconsume excess bandwidth by persistent querying and/or on-devicemonitoring to determine which advertisements are being presented inconjunction with online media. Furthermore, the disclosed methods andapparatus reduce the consumption of computing resources utilized by enduser computing devices by centralizing the detection of embeddedadvertisements. Thus, when crediting consumption of online media, enduser computing devices do not need to analyze the online media to detectthe advertisements. The reduction of computing resources is significantwhen considering the large number of end user devices.

Additionally, in some examples, the disclosed methods and apparatusallow for computerized analysis of large amounts of online media. Forexample, one online media provider might host thousands of videos.Analyzing the one online media provider or many such online mediaapprovers manually would not be feasible. For example, the disclosedmethods and apparatus result in high accuracy detection ofadvertisements even when a person (e.g., an employee of an audiencemeasurement entity) does not manually watch the online media for thepurpose of identifying the advertisements.

Although certain example methods, apparatus and articles of manufacturehave been disclosed herein, the scope of coverage of this patent is notlimited thereto. On the contrary, this patent covers all methods,apparatus and articles of manufacture fairly falling within the scope ofthe claims of this patent.

What is claimed is:
 1. An apparatus comprising: memory; computerreadable instructions; and processor circuitry to execute the computerreadable instructions to: render a graphical representation of progressassociated with presentation of primary media distributed by an onlinemedia provider to a consumer device, the primary media including anevent notification, the graphical representation to have a length and todepict the event notification at a location on the graphicalrepresentation; and determine a first time associated with the eventnotification based on the length of the graphical representation and thelocation of the event notification; determine a second time associatedwith a media feature of the primary media; and indicate, withoutaccessing the consumer device, that secondary media from the onlinemedia provider is also to be embedded in the primary media distributedto the consumer device when a difference between the first time and thesecond time meets a threshold.
 2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein theprocessor circuitry is to extract a portion of the secondary media inresponse to determining the secondary media is embedded in the primarymedia.
 3. The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the processor circuitry isto determine, from the portion of the secondary media, an identity ofthe secondary media.
 4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processorcircuitry is to obtain information that describes the graphicrepresentation from auxiliary data accompanying the primary media. 5.The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor circuitry is to: obtaina presentation time of the primary media; determine a ratio of thelocation of the event notification and the length of the graphicalrepresentation; and multiply the ratio and the presentation time todetermine the first time.
 6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein theprocessor circuitry is to identify the second time as a start time ofthe secondary media in response to determining that the secondary mediais embedded in the primary media.
 7. The apparatus of claim 6, whereinthe processor circuitry is to determine an end time of the secondarymedia in response to identifying the second time as the start time ofthe secondary media.
 8. An apparatus comprising: means for determining afirst time associated with an event notification embedded in primarymedia distributed by an online media provider to a consumer device, themeans for determining to: render a graphical representation of progressassociated with presentation of the primary media, the graphicalrepresentation to have a length and to include the event notification ata location on the graphical representation; and determine the first timebased on the length of the graphical representation and the location ofthe event notification; means for detecting a media feature of theprimary media, the means for detecting to determine a second timeassociated with the media feature; and means for indicating, withoutaccessing the consumer device, that secondary media from the onlinemedia provider is also to be embedded in the primary media distributedto the consumer device when a difference between the first time and thesecond time meets a threshold.
 9. The apparatus of claim 8, furtherincluding means for extracting a portion of the secondary media inresponse to determining the secondary media is embedded in the primarymedia.
 10. The apparatus of claim 9, further including means foridentifying, from the portion of the secondary media, an identity of thesecondary media.
 11. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the means fordetecting is to obtain information that describes the graphicrepresentation from auxiliary data accompanying the primary media. 12.The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the means for determining is to:obtain a presentation time of the primary media; determine a ratio ofthe location of the event notification and the length of the graphicalrepresentation; and multiply the ratio and the presentation time todetermine the first time.
 13. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein themeans for indicating is to identify the second time as a start time ofthe secondary media in response to determining that secondary media isembedded in the primary media.
 14. The apparatus of claim 13, whereinthe means for indicating is to determine an end time of the secondarymedia in response to identifying the second time as a start time of thesecondary media.
 15. An apparatus comprising: means for determining afirst time associated with an event notification embedded in primarymedia, the primary media from an online media provider, the first timeto be determined based on (i) a length of a graphical progress indicatorassociated with the primary media and (ii) a location of the eventnotification in the primary media; means for detecting a media featureof the primary media, the means for detecting to determine a second timeassociated with the media feature; and means for determining thatsecondary media from the online media provider is to be embedded in theprimary media when a difference between the first time and the secondtime meets a threshold.
 16. The apparatus of claim 15, further includingmeans for extracting a portion of the secondary media from the primarymedia.
 17. The apparatus of claim 16, further including means foridentifying the secondary media from the portion of the secondary media.18. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the means for determining thefirst time is to render a graphical representation of progressassociated with presentation of the primary media, the graphicalrepresentation having a length and including the event notification at alocation on the graphical representation.
 19. The apparatus of claim 18,wherein the means for determining the first time is to obtaininformation that describes the graphic representation from auxiliarydata accompanying the primary media.
 20. The apparatus of claim 18,wherein the means for determining the first time is to: obtain apresentation time of the primary media; determine a ratio of thelocation of the event notification and the length of the graphicalrepresentation; and multiply the ratio and the presentation time todetermine the first time.